Ashes
by Blaise O'Connor
Summary: Sequel to Ember. Dean returns from Hell to find Ember dead and that angels exsist. GabrielxEmber
1. Chapter 1

**Ashes**

**Welcome to the sequel of EMBER! Sorry it took so long. **

He never asked Bobby about Ember's absence, and he never spoke about it until that day, catching up after his return from hell. They had a lot of time to talk, after all, while painting symbols over the entirety of the barn to trap whatever the hell it was that brought him back from hell.

"Dead?" He asked, in shock and completely frozen, his can of spray paint forgotten in his palm. "For how long?" Bobby shook his head, staring straight ahead at the symbol he painted, his jaw clenched in a firm frown. "Years now," his voice was solid, not wavering at all. "After the fight with your dad...she was attacked."

"Why didn't you call?" Dean's voice was exasperated, his eyes bugged out in disbelief. Ember, in his mind, was too stubborn to die, a permanent fixture in this world. He should have known better, he guessed, but it didn't stop him from being surprised. She was gone, for years now, and he didn't know. "What the hell killed her?"

"You know what killed her. I've told you, idjit."

Dean was quiet, trying to finish the Egyptian sigil and balance on his ladder, digging in his memory. He couldn't quite place the thought, but something nagged at his brain. "Azazel?" His teeth clenched, finally recalling the information Bobby had already given him.

_**"I've been tracking the demon; he's got to die now. We've got his name."_

"_Thanks for the dedication, Bobby, but you're acting like it's personal." Dean and Sam stood side by side at Bobby's back door, knowing they didn't have long until the sirens would be heard, Meg's victim laying under the devil's trap. "It is," he replied, jaw clenched as he waved them along, waving with a stone wall facial expression. _

_Dean almost held his breath as he pressed the petal flat to the floor board, squealing tires on the gravel. "What the hell did that mean?" _

_Sam shrugged, about to open his mouth before the sound of sirens interrupted him, his head turning to look out the back glass. "Might want to go faster, Dean!"**_

"Why didn't you tell me?" Dean finally asked, his thoughts so muddled he couldn't decide what to think about: Ember's demise or the thing coming? They sat, guns loaded and waiting for the thing to make an appearance, impatient and ready.

"Yah didn't ask," Bobby spoke, coming to sit on the table across from Dean as he dug a knife into the wooden surface, watching the younger man bring it around in circles. "You sure you did the ritual right?" It didn't take him long to interpret the look he received. "Alright! Touchy, touchy, huh?"

The tin roofing on the barn suddenly shook with the force of the incoming wind, making the men jump from there seats. "Wishful thinking, but maybe it's just the wind?" Dean questioned before the overhead lights popped out, exploding loudly. The doors to the barn opened, revealing a man in a suit that walked forward, unstopped by the symbols painted all over the walls and ceiling, and followed by a shadow covered woman in jeans.

Dean picked up Ruby's knife, stepping to circle around the man, "Who are you?" He questions, face steady.

"I'm the one that gripped you tight and raised you from perdition."

Dean didn't take too kindly to that answer, gripping his knife tighter in his hand he spoke, "Yeah? Thanks for that." He wasn't sure himself if it was sarcasm or actual gratitude he spoke as he launched forward with Ruby's knife, plunging it deep into the man's heart.

He just stood there for a while, expression blank as the knife protruded from his suit clad chest, before glancing down at it and gripping the handle, tightly ripping it from its sheath. He dropped it, fully aware of Dean's shocked gaze.

Bobby and Dean shared a glance before Bobby decided to attack, swinging a long, sharp blade towards the man's face. It was deflected as the mystery man turned to grab it, whispers springing from no one's mouth as he raised his fingers to Bobby's forehead, his expression not changing as the mans body fell to the ground. "We need to talk, Dean."

"Alone," he added with one more glance toward Bobby's unconscious body.

Dean took the first chance he could, running and kneeling in front of Bobby's form when the man moved to stand beside the wooden table Dean had previously been sitting on. "Your friend's alive."

"Who are you?"

"Castiel," he spoke quickly and seriously as he kept his gaze downward. The woman that had appeared with him nodded toward him, bowing before disappearing into thin air.

"Yeah, I figured that much. I mean, what are you?"

Castiel looked up, expression the same serious one he had that entire evening. "I'm an angel of the Lord." Both men paused, Dean looking at the man, not knowing what to think as he continued to kneel over Bobby, before deciding to stand, his resolve steel. "Get out of here. There's no such thing."

He gave Castiel the dirtiest look he could manage, disgust written all over his manly features. "This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith." Lightning stuck, playing shadows around the barns walls, a pair of black shadow wings spreading out behind Castiel's still form.

"Some angel you are. You burned out that poor woman's eyes!"

Castiel looked downward at that, his expression finally changed to that of sadness. "I warned her not to spy on my true form," he raised his head as he stepped forth in Dean's direction. "It can be...overwhelming to humans. And so can my real voice, but you already knew that."

"You mean the gas station and the motel?" He nodded. "That was you _talking_?" Castiel nodded, prodding Dean to shake his head. "Buddy, next time, lower the volume."

"That was my mistake," Castiel's face turned solemn for a moment as he nodded once more. "Certain people, special people, can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them-your friend Ember could. I was wrong."

"And what 'visage' are you in now, huh? What? 'Holy tax accountant'? And how do you know Ember?"

"This?" Castiel grabbed the ends of his trench coat, smiling a tiny bit. "This is a vessel."

"You're _possessing_ some poor bastard?"

"He's...a devout man. He actually prayed for this."

"Look pal," Dean inwardly clenched his fists even more than they already were. "I'm not into you avoiding a question and I'm not buying what you're selling, so what are you really?" He tried to ignore Castiel's innocent look of confusion, knowing he could, and probably was, faking. "I told you," he said sincerely, not getting that Dean thought he was lying. "Right...And why would an angel...rescue _me_ from Hell?"

"Good things do happen, Dean," Castiel started to invade Dean's personal space when he stepped forward. "Not in my experience," Dean spoke threw clenched teeth. "What's the matter?" Castiel's eyes searched the man's in front of him, "You don't think you deserve to be saved." He spoke, a statement, not a question. He watched as the man swallowed before asking, "Why did you do it?"

"Because God commanded it." He stated simply. "Because we have work for you."

**Dean** dragged Bobby's body to the Impala as quickly as he could after Castiel's disappearance, ready to get the hell out of there. He drove back in silence, wondering when Bobby was going to wake up and continuously checking for his friend's pulse.

_Angels? I don't know what the hell that thing was, but it couldn't be an angel, _Dean thought to himself as he pulled into the driveway of Bobby's house. "C'mon, Bobby. Wake up so I don't have to drag your ass in the house!" He tried slapping him, pinching him and screaming in his ear as he pulled his unconscious body from the passenger door of the Impala. "Alright. I'll let nurse Sam deal with you from now on. You'd better wake up before it gets to the point of 'sponge bathes' because I'll post pictures of your nude ass on the web."

"**Dude?** Seriously?" Sam asked, closing the door to Bobby's bedroom, his eyes bugged out in shock. "_Angels_?"

"Yeah, man." Dean went into the kitchen, grabbing a beer from the fridge. "Apparently. And," he took a long gulp from the bottle. "That noise is them _talking_! Said that special people can understand him." He was quiet for a moment, thinking again about Ember and how the angel spoke about her like they had met. "Said Ember could."

"Ember?" Sam was shocked, almost like information overload. "Where is she? This is great!" Ember wasn't his favorite person, but if she could help, that would be great. If she could understand angels, then she must have met an ange-

"She's dead."

Sam was frozen, his thoughts stopping immediately, staring as Dean's face remained the same stonic expression as he brought the bottle, once again, to his mouth and finishing it at once. "For how long?" He asked quietly, solemnly. "I don't know when. Bobby said 'years'," Dean spit out, his mouth frowning so deep his cheeks started to hurt. "Oh," Sam swallowed, running his hand threw his shaggy hair and turning around to collapse in one of the dinette chairs in Bobby's kitchen. "How did she die?"

"Azazel," Dean swallowed air, throwing his beer in the trash and opening the fridge to open another.

Sam couldn't help but think back to his mother and Jessica, remembering the way Dean's eyes would follow her everywhere she went and wondering how attached he was to her, after all. "Was it a fire?"

"No," Bobby's voice came from the doorway to the kitchen. He looked disheveled and ready to pass out, but still he came to sit in front of Sam. "You," he looked at Dean. "Are going to fill me in on what happened, but first...I guess you'll want to know what happened to Ember."

Silence was made, weaving around the room. The boys had nothing to say, waiting until Bobby started his story. "Well, it happened not long after the fight your father and I had. Yellow eyes decided she was a 'distraction'. Tortured her, and ended up basically breaking her neck before some explosion went off. Bent her neck so far back it cut off oxygen to her brain and sent her into a coma." Bobby took off his hat in his pause. "She bled out in surgery that day."

"Sounds like bad day time television," Dean spoke, his back turned to the men at the table. "Where is here body? And how do the angels know her?"

"They said something about Ember?" Bobby stood from his seat at the table, coming to stand close behind Dean. "What happened?"

**Bobby** spent the next few weeks behind his desk, researching and digging into the angel legends and writing down what he remembered about Ember's life, trying to think of where she could have possibly met an angel.

Nothing. He couldn't find anything on actual angels in mythology or in Ember's life that was reliable or useful. Not a lead in sight. What he was going to do, he didn't know. How Ember got herself tangled up with the guys upstairs, he didn't know. Ember, if he remembered correctly-and he usually did-seemed to be one of those people with a trouble magnet attached to their chests. It really didn't help that she knew plenty of people-everyone in town, in fact.

She had a charming personality, one that attracted attention out the wazoo. He thought back to her last day, like he did so often, and again thought of the mystery explosion. He knew she was a bit of a pyro, and had often wondered if she set it off herself. Or if one she had been working on was accidentally triggered during the fight. Now, he wondered, if the white light wasn't actually an explosion and actually a heavenly presence.

If it was, he would feel extremely stupid for not seeing it before, but it wasn't as if he could go to some website and reread what happened form her perspective, so he relied on memory and detective work.

His phone started to ring before he could conclude his thoughts, interrupting his inner turmoil. "What?"

"Nice day to you, too, Bobby," Dean's voice came through Bobby's phone loud and clear, his sarcasm evident. "Sam's been bugging me for a week to ask what you did with Ember's body."

"So?" Bobby asked, his head starting to ache.

"So...What'd you do with her?"

"Why does it matter? You haven't cared until now."

"Yeah, well," Dean grumbled. "Before now I didn't know she was dead and angel's weren't crawlin' up my ass." Bobby thought back to the funeral, his eyes closing. "Buried her on Holy ground. No ghost, boys. I check."

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><p><em>Ok, I wanted to end it there. What do you think? You should tell me in a review. <em>

_Things and songs that inspired me while writing this chapter:_

_1. Summer Boy, by Lady Gaga_

_2. I like it Rough, by Lady Gaga_

_3. The birds outside my damn window that wouldn't leave me alone._

_4. SuzSinger for letting me bounce ideas off of her. Thanks, friend. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Ashes**

**Chapter Two**

_Hello. Sorry for taking so long on the update. I, unlike you, know how this story ends and I just don't want to see that yet! It's going to be sad to end my first story I ever published to Fan Fiction! _

_**I don't own Supernatural **__or any of it's goodness, just Ember and some of the settings and details. And the idea for this story. _

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><p><strong>As<strong> the wood faced clock on the wall chirped for midnight, Sam and Dean had just finished as much research as they possibly could for the night, having already spent the day in a car. All their meals were in the family vehicle as it was-much to Dean's tribulation-and often, they spent every daylight hour on the road, accompanied by staying up into the wee hours of each morning to do endless, result-less research.

So far, every angelic occurrence was chalked up to mental illness or lead to a dead end. Even so, no stone was left unturned if at all possible. Questions weren't getting answered and more arrived everyday. The boys could be described as disappointed with each passing road block, the days passing by slowly towards Halloween. "Get anything?" Dean sighed, stepping out of his heavy-duty shoes and ambling half-blind toward the bed he claimed earlier as his. "A couple of strange occurrences in one town. Just in time for Halloween, too, but nothing on the angel front. You?"

"Not a damn thing," Dean flopped, exhausted, on to the bed, his arm moving to cover his eyes, effectively blocking all light from entering.

"**The **angels, they're..." Ember spoke up for the first time in almost a day, time passing by quickly as an angel. "Curious-I guess would be the word-to find how you spend your time. It seems even the most ancient of the angels can still be suspect to suspicion."

Gabriel blinked, moving up from his seated position on the lakes' shore next to one of his closest friends, his vessel's muscles popping from their prolonged stillness and the sudden shock of standing. He had long grown tired of just sitting for hours at a time but, with Ember, it wasn't so monotonous anymore. "I suppose." He didn't have an answer for her. She knew he got into human games, but not the whole extent of it. Had no idea, in fact, and he planned to have it stay that way.

"I saw the date on a newspaper recently," Ember finally began, deciding to finally bring to light the issues she had her mind on for a few days now. "It feels like I just died last week, but it has been...years." The long, brown, flowing hair of the vessel moved quickly in the moist wind, already starting to curl in the humidity of Southern Italy. Not that Ember took too much notice, or cared, for that matter. "Do you ever wish you were human?"

Gabriel sighed, knowing the time passing by her was confusing. As it should be. "No. Humans...miss so...too much."

"Like?"

"Time. They move too fast to notice the small things. Always in motion, those humans." Gabriel moved to lean on the pier behind his newest, yet closest, friend. "Do you wish you were still human?"

Silence was his only answer, the waves crashed as boats passed, completely ignoring the heavenly beings-motionless-on the shore. "Do you wish I would have never saved you?"

"No," Ember breathed out quickly and quietly. She hadn't known the answer herself to that last question, and was thankful when he moved on without much fanfare. Moving to her vessel's feet, Ember turned to smile at her savior and friend, only to find him pressing in close to her now flushed face.

"Good," he whispered, moving to gently press his warm lips to Embers' inexperienced ones. "Because I'm not."

**Bobby** wasn't one for depression or pity parties, but he was prone to drinking. Drinking, he found, significantly decreased the speed and accuracy of even his most troublesome thoughts. With that said, Bobby took another long swallow of his long necked bottle, not even bothering to wipe the excess off his cold, mustache covered lips with the back of his hand anymore.

No, he had given up on hygiene a couple of bottles in, along with the stacks of books on angel lore now spread across his desk haphazardly. He brought his feet down from where they had long rested on the desk's littered surface, boots hitting the floor with a rubbery bouncing sound that echoed through the small, cluttered room.

He stood only to look around the room for the reason he had done it-as if it had the answer-stumbling until the phone rang once more from its place on the wall. "'Lo?" One more drunken belch passes his lips as he waits for an answer to his nonchalant greeting.

"Bobby?" A all-too-familiar voice asked through the phone, worry evident even through the corded phone. Since the angels appearance, the Winchester's and Bobby had talked fairly often: exchanging information, asking questions, and helping with cases, even if the boys had taken them less frequently as of late. "You ok? You don't sound too good?"

"Fine. What y'ah want this time?" Bobby slurred the least amount he could manage.

"What do you know about Samhain?"

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><p><em>And that's the end. I'm sorry. I know it's short. Maybe the next update will come quicker than the last? Who knows. Reviews makes them come faster, that I can promise. <em>


	3. Chapter 3

**Ashes**

**Chapter Three**

_I'm sorry to admit, but chapter three will probably be small also. I just finished moving! Couldn't write until I got my desk and computer back. Thank you for the reviews you gave, they make my day every time. Thank you to SuzSinger for always, always pushing me to write, even if it is increasingly annoying sometimes. I love you, girl. Thank you Jen for your awesome reviews: you're the bestest. _

Angels, even with their pristine reputation, were not to be trusted. They were evil, vile, emotionless creatures. And, that, children, is the moral of this weeks' Winchester adventure. Even if angels are supposed to help people, the way they did it was in a truly malicious way.

Blowing away an entire town to prevent one tiny seal from being broken could be used as a good example. Dean Winchester didn't like the gaggle of them hanging around him. They made him itch. Having Castiel and Uriel around meant other angels constantly popping in and out. Another pain in Winchester sides.

There was one in particular that always seemed to run their errands. "She's...in training," was Castiel's only response to Dean's inquiry. He found her to be quiet. And hot. But his brain kept telling him that hitting on an angel was probably a sin.

Since when did Dean Winchester listen to that tiny voice, anyway?

**Dean **drove like a bat out of hell to get away from the small town they had previously stayed at. He needed to have a serious talk with Castiel. And Sam.

_This can not continue, at least not very long, _Dean thought as he passed a Prius on the two lane desert of a highway.

"Sam," he threw his arm over to smack the younger, yet taller sibling's shoulder. "Get the map."

_This entry is a lot shorter than planned, but I didn't want to go too long without giving you anything, including a reason for what I'm about to say. While writing, I received a phone call that my grandma was in the hospital and I needed to come see her. I, unfortunately, didn't get to say goodbye. On my way to the hospital, she had a heart attack caused by a blood clot and passed away. It took all I had just to complete the sentence I was on. Hopefully, I will finish the stories I already have up but, further than that, I am undecided if I wish to continue writing. _

_Please understand, _

_Emmeline. _


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